A Few Words

 

The Research Continues

 The research on wild cats (Old wild cats, the original species ) is still ongoing as we try to find out more about them and the regional variation in colour (see The Red Paper Felids).

The work on Old foxes from the UK and Western Europe never stops either. We are getting a better idea of their appearance, lifestyle and so on. It is even possible that a hybrid fox still exists with Old fox DNA but that is pure speculation at the moment.

We have never (by "we" I mean myself and colleague LM) stopped looking for old taxidermy, photographs and art that accurately illustrates the old canid and felid species. In fact we have a large data base now.

We have not, of course, forgotten the Old wolf of the British isles -England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. We have come to conclusions (see The Red Paper Canids) about these wolves and are currently gathering more data.

The Red Papers have quite literally slapped down the century plus of dogma and all of this is "out of pocket" -we receive no funding and so far European museums (barring one and I'll mention that in the new year) have been far from helpful. The Natural History Museum (London) is similar and if they are to be believed (and I believe them) they have, uh, "mislaid" important specimens.

We have enough now to take the next step which is DNA testing of Old foxes and Old wild cats and even wolves. Frustratingly that takes money and there is simply no funding for this work. Officially the UK is busy killing off species such as badgers and foxes amongst others to be bothered with historical research.

The Red Papers really need an established publisher to promote and sell them but let's say that the "horsey" hunt set has a lot of friends in publishing and no one wants to upset the apple cart. So the work will continue but at a snails pace sadly.

Yes, UK Wildlife IS Heading Toward More Extinctions. Sit Back And Enjoy Your Pizza

The Soon to be extinct mammals

 "The marten cat and the polecat, the badger and the otter. unless where the latter is strictly preserved for hunting purposes, are in many places very rare indeed, and the two former almost extinct, and were it not that the fox...happens at present, to be the petted animal which provides for rich and poor the sport of kings, healthy exercise, and employment for thousands, and puts more money in circulation, directly or indirectly, than all of the other wild animals in the world put together, he too -for, alas! he has many enemies -would in our islands, soon become a thing of the past, with nothing to remind future generations of the bygone glories, delights, and excitements of the chase, save a few antiquated volumes in our libraries, or perhaps a dusty and moth-eaten mask or brush hanging in the ancestral hall!"

Thus wrote Colonel J. S. Talbot in 1905. A true sporting psychopath. In fact, as noted before, there were extinctions of species in the UK that resulted in various species being imported into the UK to keep 'sport' alive. Talbot writes of the excitement and delight of men and women on horse back running behind large hounds all to enjoy the chase and the kill and try to snatch a foot or tail or even head (mask). The hounds themselves, described in Talbot's own words "devoured"the whole fox. The "beloved" hounds were treated despicably and starved to make them read to chase, kill and eat. Cruelty to fox hounds and horses is nothing new.

Talbot also notes how the three Old British foxes were driven to extinction or to hybridise with the newly imported foxes. The extinction of the Old foxes occurred around the 1860s and some may have clung on in remote parts of Scotland but they were said to have survi9ved in Ireland where no new foxes were introduced -one might ask why English hunts sent gift foxes to Irish hunts if the species survived there?

Talbot was a typical old duffer of the 'sport' and writes about how he and hunts would ride through crop fields in Egypt which natives did not like but, you know, bloody foreigners knew their place. In England crops and much more fell victim to riders and hounds which is why the 'hunt loving' countrymen started fencing off their land and fields with wire -so hated by the hunts.

Note also that Talbot states how the Marten cat and polecat had been driven to extinction in some areas and in others were what we would call today "critical status". All of these 'sportsmen' knew full well and wrote and spoke about hunting making species extinct and yet they carried on killing while "o woe-ing!" They could not stop themselves; they had to have the stalking, chasing and killing and souvenir taking of the true psychopath even though they knew they were wiping out species -new ones could always be purchased to continue the 'fun'.

Is it not 'funny' how the same thing is said here about how fox hunting raised and circulated more money and created more employment than any other animal hunted and killed in the world -a complete and utter nonsense and if Talbot believed this he was self deceiving on a grand scale. He was, in fact, stating that fox hunting benefitted the economy on a large scale. When government and local authorities want to push the destruction of green spaces and old woods and forestry to build offices, homes and, ooh, let's say wasting billions of GB£ on a rail network destroying habitat how often do you hear that those objecting are not thinking of the local economy, the benefits to the community and the many jobs that will be created? It is something always spouted and thankfully more people are becoming aware of this.

Yes, the "poor" (which would be anyone not rich enough to be called Middle class or afford to be a member of the local otter, hare or fox hounds) also killed these animals and not necessarily for 'sport' -many did so because they enjoyed killing the animals in question and there was a nice bounty to collect for what you killed. This was proudly and nationally known and accepted and the terms "vulpicide", "melecide" and "felicide" were used -"good work and congratulations" to those who wiped out badgers. Later it turned into a rich man and (grudgingly) woman's "bit of fun" but the British from top to bottom rungs of the social ladder all did their part.

Badgers were baited, poisoned, shot, snared and even simply clubbed while the 'sportsmen' accepted that the badgers were "simple and harmless creatures" -but, you know, "kill 'em!"

The fact that despite all of the melecide British badgers survived has always been something of a mystery (which I recently solved) and in the 1970s the species was give 'protected' status by the government and yet, in 2023 the same people who gave that protected are making a few people quite wealthy by paying for the slaughter of 250,000 badgers and that knowing full well that 60,000 plus are dying on our roads each year.

Talbot feared the badger was about to go extinct but it hung on and survived until the 21st century and over 100 years later humans are set to achieve that goal -recognised by many around the world as wrong. In A Field Guide To The Carnivores Of The World by Luke Hunter (Panthera, London, 2011) it is stated (p. 164):

"Persecuted as a pest and for illegal 'baiting' with terriers. Controversially culled as a carrier of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in the UK, despite strong evidence that culls do not reduce incidence of the disease. Red List"

Red List means that it is considered an endangered species and, of course, in the UK it is 'protected' by the same body (DEFRA/Natural England) that pays shooters a lot of money to go out and kill them. Scientifically if eradicating a supposed cause of disease has no effect then it is clear that said suspected cause is innocent.  In the UK it has been suggested t6hat infected cattle can pass bTB to badgers and vice versa but there is no proven source and some data featured in reports seems inconsistent with facts. In Bovine Tuberculosis in Britain and Ireland – A Perfect Storm? the Confluence of Potential Ecological and Epidemiological Impediments to Controlling a Chronic Infectious Disease a paper by A. R. Allen, R. A. Skuce, and A. W. Byrne (2018) it is stated that:

"Even with such heterogeneity of approach across time and national boundaries, it remains startling that particularly in Britain, which came close to achieving eradication in the 1960 and 1970s  bovine TB is resurgent "

Therefore we -I say "we" as in the British "animal loving" public- sit by and very few do anything. Well, save a species and try to help the environment or watch the latest TV soap "scandal story"....with a pizza and beer? Yes, the pizza industry is doing well.

Talbot and his kin -even as far back as the 18th century- were noting how they were wiping out any and every species for 'fun' but also to make an area better for the chosen sport whether pheasant and grouse hunting or hare coursing. They bemoan the species being lost (no sport when they went) but mass importation was there.

I am writing this knowing full well that it will be "in one eye and out the other". No one cares.  Let's believe that badgers (not bad animal husbandry) badgers spread TB -kill the lot. Foxes are on the decline -so what?  Thousands  of species are dying every year on our roads. So what? The UK does not recognise the need for wildlife overpasses and underpasses nor want to spend any money on that nonsense.

"This green and pleasant land"

"A nation of animal lovers"

The Blood red Island

Get off of your asses and do something before we have another period of extinctions -EXTINCTION IS FOREVER

We Had Wolves and Foxes In Britain -Did We Also Have A Jackal-type Canid?

 

There is one reason that DNA work is needed on the Old fox varieties that once existed in the UK -the Mountain/Greyhound, the Mastiff/Hill and the Cur or Common fox. 

Even back in the mid to late 1800s, by which time the Old foxes were very likely extinct, the 'experts' (I am reminded of the mocking way my late friend Franklyn A. Davin-Wilson defined an "expert" -"X=The Unknown and Spurt is a drip under pressure") were mainly 'naturalists in the sense that they had ideas of grandeur but were really mainly interested in only one thing; hunting and killing anything that moved for 'fun'. The had to know their animals to be able to get more fun out of killing them and getting a trophy (a psychologist could get a paper out of this behaviour).

Remember that there was nothing in the way of "conservation" (another word hunts loved to use) other than allowing foxes to breed and live freely without hinderance from the local (employed by master of the fox hounds) gamekeeper. It was written well before the 18th century that foxes were lessening in number. Hunts were 'suffering' and despite the warnings which were near panic creating because no fox equalled "no sport" and writers make it clear that this troubled them deeply. So as the last of the Mountain foxes was hunted into extinction the time honoured tradition of importing thousands more foxes from Europe replaced them.

These 'experts', mostly after the demise of the Old foxes, argued with and ridiculed those who had hunted the foxes. It was a nonsense that there were "three fox types" and they were nothing more that occasional small, medium sized and the occasional outsized red fox. These people had access to libraries with every piece of information they needed and could easily have visited someone with a mountain fox taxidermy. However, they did what so many after them have done and that was to sit in a comfortable armchair, drink their port and 'know-it-all' without checking.

It is interesting that despite the taxidermy out there one generation after another since 1900 has referred to Mountain foxes as "hunters' tall stories" or "just the occasional large fox" and I read this over and over again in books from the 1950s on. 1969 "Well I have never seen one" and 1970s/1980s "all I ever see are regular red foxes" which actually demonstrates one thing and that is when it comes to these authors/'experts' their statements are ill-informed and worthless.  They have obviously not read the old sources or done any other type of research because had they then they would know the Mountain fox was gone by the 1860s. These are the same people who hail the tabby European wild cat as the true Scottish wild cat when it is another import from Europe and bears no resemblance to the true British wild cat and the original wild cat in Scotland was announced as extinct by the 1860s (all catalogued and referenced in The Red Paper Felids).  Those naturalists who had studied and killed wild cats visited museums and noted how one exhibit after another held no true wild cat just hybrids or "clearly" feral domestic cats -dogma had arrived.

Incidentally, it appears that these wild cats were transported around and released into shooting country up to at least the 1920s.

When Britain was separated 10,000 years ago by the Doggerland flooding from Europe free movement of animals was gone and they were confined to this island. We had a separate sub-species of arctic wolf that was not affected by island dwarfism (which should not be a surprise) and lived on until it was wiped out because it was a wolf even if the local wolves were no "problem". Forests and woods cut down or burnt to drive out wolves (and other forest wildlife) to kill. 

We also had what would have been a type of fox that existed in Europe until the gradual spread of the red fox which was the result of wiping out the Old Western fox.We have managed to build up a picture of what these foxes looked like.

We know that the Mountain/greyhound fox was fast, had great stamina and could "put up a fight at the end" which was what every 'sportsman' wanted  and these Mountain foxes were big. They dwarf other foxes and they look a little unusual. These foxes had survived more than 10,000 years until all of the high prestige animals that were hunted were pushed into extinction and suddenly the fox became an animal that could be hunted. One other thing t5hat was noted about Mountain foxes was that their young were "stubble born" -out in the open and easily moved if threats approached which is somewhat coyote-like. In fact the Mountain fox had many traits that are similar if not the same as coyotes (wild canids have a good few similar behaviour traits).

In Europe there was the wolf, the jackal and then the Old fox. In the Americas there were wolves, coyotes and foxes.  In Britain there were wolves, mountain foxes and the two type of local environment suited foxes. The Mountain fox had many traits of the coyote and jackal and seemed to fill the same niche in Britain. 

I need to point out that when Ireland was separated from Britain it also had its own wolves and foxes -which would develop for the environment it was living in and those adaptions would, some would argue, make them also unique sub-species. Unfortunately, Ireland seems to have wiped out its species much earlier than Britain and Mountain foxes, etc. were sent by English hunts to those in Ireland top continue the sport. Irish hunts also imported red foxes from Europe so what is seen there today are not true Old Irish foxes but descendants of the imported ones and no new stock from Europe or England from the 1910s on.Oh, and I've proved Ireland had a wild cat -thought I would point that out.

There is one thing that has niggled at my brain for a long time and that is how the appearance of the Mountain fox in particular varied from the others. My colleague LM even noted certain traits in appearance.  The Mountain fox filled the niche that the jackal does in Europe and the coyote in the Americas. Is there the possibility that the Mountain fox was not a fox but a jackal?  

Is it possible that the hunters and naturalist 'sportsmen' could have hunted a British type jackal and not realised it?

The answer to the latter question is simple: yes.The sheer ignorance amongst these people is almost unbelievable and it is all written down in black and white in the historical documents and books. We can now say that light coloured to white foxes were not under any circumstances "very rare" because 19th/early 20th century taxidermy provides many examples. Yet, back in the "golden age of hunting" (19th century) there would be furious arguments over there being white foxes. People were accused of telling tall stories of having hunted and killed one and some were even ostracised from some sporting groups because of the claim. In fact it is even written that some who had hunted (but had not realised until the kill) a white fox were flummoxed. They had killed the impossible and some of their pals even treated said kill to a tall story. White foxes were well known but 'experts' confirmed that they "did not exist".  

There are other examples of these 'expert sportsmen' getting fox behaviour and much more wrong. After all the only thing of importance was the chase, how long it lasted before the kill or the fox "went to earth" and escaped. 

One fox that had its ear clipped was sent to a hunt 80 miles away as a gift but later was found back in its former territory.  

Foxes "reach a ripe old age at five years" (if it survived that long. Yet we know from historical accounts and even today that some foxes live to 7, 8 or even 12 years of age if not hunted or killed by cars. 

We also know that one hunt chased after a particular "white fox" for years until one day it met its end. The head of this 'fox' (paraphrase slightly) "looked as though it had come from a wolf". A big 'fox' with a head of a wolf....hmm.

These hunts included reputable 'naturalists' who "knew their fox" and even though the Count Bouffon had carried out experiments long before these people still argued that a fox could interbreed with a domestic dog. Others argued no but each faction was willing to throw their 'evidence' out there.

The stupidity and outright ridiculous things that were claimed did not even really need modern science to prove but each person had their own views and theories and even into the 20th century would disagree and argue over the scientific classification of foxes and other animals.

These old duffers were told that there were three fox types and so dogma set in. If a noted fellow stated there were three fox variations (not species - and I'll not go into how nasty the arguments were on that when it was never claimed) then there were three varieties of fox. Even when prairie dogs/coyotes were released in the Epping Forest area for hunting those 'sportsmen' involved in the hunts wrote how big the mountain foxes were and a good chase. 

We know that there were three types of fox with the changes needed to adapt to their environments but the Mountain fox seems odd. Is it possible that I have been wrong and have just assumed that it was an Old fox because the records called it that?  I am quite willing to consider the idea that the Mountain fox was a jackal type canid but there is only one way to prove it: DNA testing.

Face Book -Time To Stop Supporting Wildlife Killing (even if you are Americans)

 

Image from Face Book

 Face Book thought that suggesting one of its pages Coyote Hunting would be something I am interested in.

Me, a conservationist specialising in felids and canids.

Lots of grinning psychopaths holding up dead coyotes, showing footage of their killing coyotes and so on.

So I reported it as violence and animal abuse.

I do not think that at a time when canids world wide -foxes, wolves, coyotes, dingoes and others are facing death on a massive scale that FB should be providing social media (and there are a good few 'sport' pages that are showing illegal activity) for what amounts to 'killing for fun' and wildlife destruction.

Time FB stopped thinking about the money and data snatching and more about the world we are living in.

image from Face Book

FB response which is the same response for ANYTHING reported. I suggest those that are anti hunting and pro environmental development find a new social platform. I will be looking for one over the next month as FB supports blood sports and that includes the illegal aspects of these groups.,

"To keep our review process as fair as possible, we use the same set of Community Standards to review all reports.

We've taken a look and found that the group doesn't go against our Community Standards.

We understand that this might be upsetting, so we recommend exploring the options available to control what you see.

If you want us to review something specific within a group, make sure that you report the content (for example, photo), not the entire group.

You can also request a review within 180 days if you disagree with the decision to not take this down."